Long Beach’s Broadway Corridor to Get Protected Bike Lanes, Expanded Sidewalks, More

Much to the applause of urbanists and lovers of streets, Mayor Robert Garcia and the Long Beach’s Public Works Departments came out with great news at today’s Broadway Visioning Forum: the in-dire-need-of-love Broadway Corridor will not just be the first and largest infrastructure project from Measure A funds; it will be lined with Class 1 protected bike lines, expanded sidewalks, and decreased car lanes.

I’ve been a longtime and outspoken advocate for a better Broadway—and not just because I wanted to see bike lanes. Complete streets aren’t just about siphoning off car access but rather examining the neighborhoods that their main streets run through. And in the case of Broadway, years after years of community meetings have led to these main concerns: calming down traffic, heightening bike connections, widening sidewalks, improving parking, adding better lighting, and providing facade improvements for buildings.

This probably explained why the neighborhood surrounding the Broadway Corridor voted for Measure A—the tax initiative that focused on generating safety and public infrastructure funds—by over 80%.

Representatives from the Public Works Department emphasized that they are not solely focused on the Spandex-clad bike clubbers but rather the “eight-to-eighty crowd” that uses their bike alone, walks to the park, invests in the neighborhoods, and uses the streets for more than driving.

What the City is going to do is nothing short of a massive undertaking and one that would have never happened had it not been for the countless years that advocates have been looking to have a better corridor paired with the recent influx of money needed to make the project possible. It’s a dream for the neighborhood.

The announcement is no hiccup: Broadway is undergoing an entire renovation, from sewer lines below to the complete revamp of the street itself. It will be shrunk from four lanes to two lanes of vehicle traffic with one lane each direction for bikes protected with bollards, and two lanes dedicated to parking (with the possibility of increasing parking following a study to be conducted).

“We studied Broadway as well as side streets so that we were assured that impacts would not impede other areas,” said Sean Crumby of Public Works. “In fact, we studied traffic and determined that no traffic impacts will be met by reducing Broadway to two lanes. So we can have a road diet without an impact; traffic will be removed from pedestrians and bicyclists while those driving won’t face an impact in their commute.”

The bike lanes are probably the biggest deal because it allows a much more efficient, safer connection between Long Beach east of Alamitos and west of it. Currently, bicyclists take 3rd and are met with the dangerous intersection of 3rd and Alamitos, where they have to weave through cars to get onto the DTLB protected lanes.

According to Crumby, the DTLB lanes are up for renovation and that bid is out to contractors to take on the job. That renovation will be incorporated on how to best connect Broadway to DTLB. That could mean several situations; perhaps they will push the westbound bike lane on Broadway through Alamitos and up Lime, connecting to 3rd with full protection (leaving eastbound Broadway bicyclists somehow having to maneuver to the south side of Broadway to get across Alamitos)… Perhaps Broadway and 3rd will be decoupled… Who knows?

In terms of parking, Crumby notes they “really looked into parking”—and he wasn’t kidding: they’re conducting a study. They are looking into metered parking (which in turn could bring in revenue for businesses should a BID come about), permit parking, angled parking on connecting and side streets like Junipero, and parking brackets or Ts, which force people to park properly rather than double parking or not pulling forward to the parking spot’s edge.

One man actually lamented the idea of parking Ts, saying that since they are required to be a certain length, it will actually cut off spots. This is true to some extent and while I am happy he was confident about his neighborhood—”We are very efficient; we never take up additional space”—I am not so confident. Living across from Bixby Park, double-parkers, inept parallel parkers, and selfish parkers holding spots for future guests is the name of the game.

Bring on the parking Ts, baby—I don’t care how Draconian it is or how efficient you claim people park. There is not one iota of evidence that people properly use space if given it (and you can look forward to my “100 Photos of People Parking like A**holes” piece soon to prove just that).

The City, actually, deserves applause on this—despite the handful of NIMBYs, including the woman uttering “Bullshit” under her breath repeatedly. This is a massive undertaking and one that would have never happened had it not been for the countless years that advocates have been looking to have a better corridor paired with the recent influx of money needed to make the project possible.

It’s a dream for any neighborhood.

They’ll be breaking ground this year while the aforementioned parking study will be finished before the end of this year but after the groundbreaking. But, I want to end on a much more hopeful note—and that is through the complaints of angry, old NIMBYs and/or confused individuals. Here are the various things brought up by these folks:

Skateboarders need to be banned because they “run people off the sidewalk everyday.”

If bike lanes aren’t used “all the time, 24 hours a day,” they shouldn’t be built.

“I want low rent, storage for my car for free, safe streets, better lighting, more parking buuuuut I don’t want any new housing or any new people moving here, I don’t want my commute in my car being remotely hindered, and I don’t want to see homeless people.”

There is no point to any design if we aren’t paying homage to Craftsman homes nearby.

What about the rain water?

More parking.

The most parking but make it pretty.

“Oh, so you are making more parking… But on Junipero? That doesn’t help us all the way over on Falcon.“

I’ll end it on that last one because, actually, yeah, it does help you even “all the way” (i.e. one-third of a mile—the distance! *cue faint*) on Falcon.

We’re all in this together, amigo, and if you have to walk an extra block after you’ve parked, forget that you walked it and maybe think about it as good for your heath, good for your neighborhood by adding foot traffic, and a chance for you to clear your mind after, well, sitting in a car in all the traffic that people in individual cars cause.

Sure, this is a hipsters dream. I wonder, how much in taxes DO baristas pay? I’ll tell you… First, they’re not homeowners, so they don’t contribute in a positive way to the city…. And secondly, those who hate cars will never win the anti-car battle. No city can survive on the sales tax base that bicycle riders and bus riders bring to the table…The businesses that actually pay the taxes, create the ‘careers’ that support families, and pay the sales taxes that fund all of these ‘pie in the sky’ fantasies, are NOT within the area. No one goes to the grocery store on a bicycle to buy groceries for the week. No one goes to Home Depot on a bicycle to shop for garden supplies. Who rides their bicycle to Costco? People who ‘shop’ on bicycles buy what can be carried in a backpack or basket. Those people do not support the tax structure that the politicians in long beach depend on to waste on ridiculous projects like this. Oh, by the way, small business rents will go up – so, there goes the quaintness of the area, businesses will shut down. Prices will go up, everyone will complain. Homes will be torn down to accommodate hipsters moving in,to large housing projects, rent control freaks will complain. In general, this will backfire! The very qualities that make the area great will be gone. Good luck with that.

Brent your rant goes on and on about taxes but says nothing about the source of funding for the Broadway improvements; Voter Approved Measure A revenue. That means that enough voters in this “car hating” city voted to approve higher taxes and build what you call a “ridiculous waste of money”. Many voters actually DO want bike lanes, wider sidewalks and calmed traffic. Don’t like it? Next time get enough likeminded people to vote against an infrastructure tax that everyone knew would be used to build more bike lanes and improve streets and sidewalks. Until then you have simply lost the argument. But, you can always rant about it. It’s a free country. God bless America!

Measure A was NON SPECIFIC about WHAT they were going to do, and there is virtually NO RESIDENTS query or asking how impacted neighborhood fells about HIS plans. Sneaky, sneaky political games. We got JACKED on measure A. 😫

Not everyone on a bike is a barista. Lots of people that ditch the car make good money AND have enough left over (from not wasting money on cars and medical bills that come from a sedentary lifestyle) for additional investments like rental properties.

It never ceases to amaze me how these people can never re-examine these ideological/fantasy-based beliefs. We want more low-income housing (as if Long Beach had any shortage of multi-unit/crackerboxes)! Then they all turn around and scream that there is no parking and terrible crime.

But hey, maybe we’re wrong. Let’s try the notion of “calming” not just to traffic, but to welfare. Let’s calm the need for welfare by providing less routes to access it!!!

Brent,
I ride my bike daily to work at Poly High from Belmont Heights. I often buy groceries on the way home for dinner, or meet my wife for a drink on retro row, or downtown. Happy hour on Fridays is always local, because I’m on my bike, which contributes to the local economy. I ride to get local takeout on the weekends, and of course to the lagoon and beach trails. I bought my house in this part of long beach because of the bike ability, and that my car is in the driveway until I need to make the slog to Costco or Home Depot every once in a while.

The point, although drawn out here, is that I spend more time and money locally because I have and use my bike. Get with the picture. And please, save your sob story about renters not contributing to the tax base. Pathetic.

You are somewhat dimwitted, but appear to be a nice type of person/ Please note you own a home, have a wife, work close to your home, and, most importantly -HAVE A DRIVEWAY.
So maybe you need to work on empathy. Most people on Broadway are single, or single mothers,many work jobs with irregular hours, most DO NOT HAVE DRIVEWAYS.
If you have to drive your children to school, then go to work, then pickup your children at a day care center after work, them drive to a grocery store, then drive home, park the car ON THE STREET, then walk the groceries and the children down the street to the apartment building- just how precious is parking to you?
VERY precious.
Take away parking, and you make the struggling person’s life very difficult.
The bicycle is a very nice invention, but the car is vastly superior. If you choose a bicycle, good for you. But try living like the other half- a low wage job, limited support of family or friends, a parent responsible for children and grandparents, a construction worker with truck filled with tools- here are plenty of people that need cars and parking.
Broadway is about 85 % residential, the rest of the businesses are either run down gay bars, or liquor stores.
Long Beach should ask the residents what they want, to build a more successful neighborhood.
Failure to poll the residents on what is needed will just continue to make Broadway, and the adjacent streets, more unlivable.

Exactly without this polling and communication, this is a disaster waiting to happen, If anything the residents and business owners would rather pool resources to build district parking with the wider sidewalks so that the neighborhood won’t get further impacted by lack of parking. As a regular customer on Broadway, I notice most visitors to the Broadway bars come via carpool or uber/lyft so reducing the parking to an already scarce area will piss off the residents who already deal with the Broadway traffic and impacts. There are already Bike Lanes on 3rd Street the folks use because it is safer and the streets are calmer.

Who is really surprised the first infrastructure project from measure A is going to be downtown? Really who is ?

3% of residents get to work on bike – over 90% still use a car. This is from the Mayors own survey. Waste of money no matter where it came from and certainly a pet vanity project for someone without common sense.

Let’s build up the heck out of only downtown and while we are adding thousands of residents to the city who drive to work every day, we can remove more lanes of traffic to accommodate “i3%” with the thought that if we build bike lanes they will use them. 😓

I agree with you that it’s ridiculous to cater to the 3% bicycle riding fantasy; However, on the other point, there is good reason to focus on downtown. The number one thing Long Beach needs is jobs. Companies that provide career-oriented jobs are not going to come to a ghetto. They come to downtown areas that are thriving, and are filled with educated, hard-working, aspiring, career-minded people – not the areas filled with welfare collecting, pot-smoking, degenerates who make babies and then need working people to support them. By building the infrastructure and amenities of downtown, events and visitors are brought in. This equates to tax money and a thriving area which is attractive to businesses. Once there are some actual jobs in Long Beach, there will be a greatly increased amount of tax revenue to support the leeches/lowlifes.

Great piece and great summing up of the discussion (I was there). The various NIMBY comments were indeed for the most part disappointing. This is going to be a great step forward for the neighborhood—not perfection, not the end of the work to be sure—but a very positive step for sure.

I am so happy the fools who want this are going to get it!! NO PARKING, never again. Thank GOD I have 3 parking spaces- I can rent one out to the trendy hipsters. As to walking a few blocks? OK who wants to walk a few blocks at 10-11 pm at night, coming home from work, wondering if you are going to be robbed or worse.
AND yes- my neighbors all shop in LAKEWOOD, or SIGNAL HILL< and don't walk around or use public transportation- unless you mean the illegal halfway houses on Broadway, or the parolee buildings on 4th Street, with the residents of that ghetto housing unable to afford anything except bus fare.
Gridlock for sure downtown, and ROAD DIET is another name for bad traffic.
Please notice the other wealthier beach cities do not punish people who own homes and cars. Do you think someone that is paying $650,000 and up for a piece of property in Alamitos Beach wants NO PARKING AVAILABLE?
LMAO- wait until all of the residents in the apartments have no place to park cars. They are not going to start biking to work.
The 3% bicycle commuters can enjoy the Broadway street. No one else will, and no one has bothered to contact residents down here. Where is Jeannine Pearce? Getting drunk in a city car again?
Long Beach should be using that Measure A money to make MUNICIPAL parking lots. Like Santa Monica. Like Pasadena. Like Glendale. MONEY HONEY=Parking lots. Instead we get more babbling about more taxes, which is just what a BID is. MORE TAXES.
So over Long Beach- stupid decisions for over 40 years now. Still Ghetto.

I invite you all to spend a little time in the Livingston/Ocean blvd area. Out of controll motorcycles, racing cars and the always charming sqreaming transient population. Stop crying about Broadway. The corridor thinks the rest of LBC should shut up and pander.